Making option trading more accessible for all investors

This portfolio management platform wanted to make option trading more accessible to their users without taxing their infrastructure.

Connecting to the full OPRA feed would cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, taking into account exchange licenses, data delivery, and infrastructure.

Infrastructure posed a particular challenge – since the OPRA feed disseminates all US option data, including trades, quotes, and administrative messages, the amount of data is constantly expanding. This would have required them to continually increase their bandwidth and processing power to keep up, which put too much pressure on their budget and team.

Simplifying Options

They found the answer in Intrinio’s filtered real-time options feed. The filtered feed delivers real-time trades, as well as the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) tagged by OPRA and conflated at 250-millisecond intervals.  

Rather than building and maintaining the necessary infrastructure in-house, they’re able to leverage Intrinio’s platform to pull high-quality data while keeping their costs low. Intrinio’s flexible licensing allows them to display option data to the users of their platform, with reasonable redistribution costs that would help them stay profitable. Intrinio also helped them navigate exchange fees associated with using real-time option data for external display and facilitated the necessary paperwork with OPRA.

They have access to the following data through Intrinio’s Web API:

• Underlying ticker
• Expiration date
• Strike price
• Type: put or call
• Contract ID
• Last trade price, size, and timestamp
• Last bid/ask price, size, and timestamp
• Trade volume
• Open interest
• Exercise style: American or European
• Implied volatility
• Greeks: delta, gamma, theta, vega

Intrinio’s real-time options feed is also available via WebSocket, with the following objects returned:

• Contract ID  
• Last trade price, size, and timestamp
• Type: put or call

Trial & Onboarding

The company integrated Intrinio’s powerful Web API into their platform, leveraging technical support from Intrinio’s engineering team and its comprehensive documentation to streamline the process. Intrinio’s engineering team was also on hand to answer questions and resolve any roadblocks during the company’s free two-week trial.

Once they confirmed that the feed met their business’ needs and signed a contract, the company worked with Intrinio’s dedicated customer success team for a seamless onboarding. The US-based customer success team is responsible for all aspects of the company’s account, from answering questions to coordinating technical support to scaling their data solution.

The company has access to live chat five days a week, as well as direct phone and email access to their customer success team. For technical or data quality concerns, they can leverage Intrinio’s built-in ticketing system to communicate directly with Intrinio’s technical team.

Working Together Closely

The company continues to rely on Intrinio’s comprehensive support while they scale their business. They enjoy complimentary data sourcing services for all third-party financial data, including ​​​​historical end of day option data to help their users backtest option trading strategies.

Working with Intrinio as their data partner allows the company to focus on growing their platform, instead of getting caught up in the minutiae of sourcing and displaying option prices. They’re able to compete with the market’s top portfolio management platforms, even with a small team, by keeping their infrastructure costs low.

If you’re looking for option data that fits all types of businesses, request a consultation with the Intrinio team.